Adult ADD/ADHD

South Shore Neuropsychiatric Center is dedicated to helping adult professionals and students get rapid relief of their ADD/ADHD symptoms with targeted and efficient, powerful psychopharmacologic intervention.

What is adult attention deficit disorder?

Many adults have ADHD and don’t know they have it. Like ADHD in children and teens, ADHD in adults can make life challenging. Adults with ADHD can struggle with difficulties in one or more areas of daily life.

Common signs and symptoms of adult ADHD include:

Poor concentration
Short attention span
Disorganization
Forgetfulness
Difficulty starting and/or finishing projects
Moving from one task to another, being involved in too many projects simultaneously
Time-management issues, over-estimating available time or time it takes to finish the task
Making impulsive decisions, poor planning, impulsive spending
Difficulty interacting with others, interrupting others, blurting out the answer

Not every person with ADHD has every symptom, or experiences the severity of ADHD symptoms to the same degree.

Diagnosis of Adult ADD/ADHD

Most adults occasionally experience inattentive, impulsive, and hyperactive behaviors from time to time. Every person has an occasional experience of misplacing keys, getting distracted at work, blurting out something on impulse or interrupting inadvertently. However, for adults with ADHD, these symptoms appear more often and may create challenges in the work place. There’s no single laboratory test used to determine an ADHD diagnosis. The diagnosis of Adult ADD/ADHD is frequently confirmed by an Adult Psychiatrist who specializes in this field.

How is it different to childhood ADHD?

Unlike other mental disorders such as depression, ADHD does not start in adulthood. However, many adults who had symptoms of ADHD as a child did not get formally diagnosed. As a matter of fact, adult parents of children with ADHD first notice their own ADHD symptoms at the time that their children get diagnosed. Adult ADHD is a continuation of ADHD from childhood. The main difference is in the type of difficulties and symptoms experienced.

Adults are less likely to have intense hyperactivity. Instead of hyperactivity, adults with ADHD are more likely to feel restless, fidget a lot, have difficulty relaxing and feel on edge a lot of the time. A typical ADHD adult may have gone through life being constantly misunderstood. A diagnosis of ADHD is frequently very liberating to a person who struggled all of their life with symptoms that they could not define or understand. Smoking, drinking alcohol and, in some cases, drug taking are also more common among ADHD adults.

Life Long Progression of ADD/ADHD

A common misconception is that ADHD affects only children. In fact, 60% of children with ADHD may continue to have symptoms as adults. The average age of an Adult ADD/ADHD patient in treatment is 35. It is not surprising that Adults with ADD/ADHD need the most help in their 20’s and 30’s: it is the time of life that is more professionally challenging. Most young professionals do not have a choice which task they must perform themselves and which can be delegated. Moreover, most young professionals do not control their work environment. Professionals can frequently ameliorate ADHD symptoms later in their career by adjusting their work environment, delegating tasks and getting assistants.

Medications:

Most ADHD symptoms improve safely, quickly and effectively with medications. When patients experience the positive effect of medication for the first time, they feel profound relief. The effect is so sudden and dramatic; it is frequently compared to the effect of putting on glasses and seeing clearly for the first time. Stimulants are believed to enhance the availability of the brain’s chemical messengers Dopamine and Norepinephrine.

These messengers play a role in behaviors like attention and movement. The stimulants include medications like Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, Adderall XR, Vyvanse, Focalin, and others. As long as stimulant medications are used as prescribed, they can alleviate symptoms safely. Some patients with family history of heart disease or history of cardiac anomalies may require a cardiogram (a routine part of initial evaluation). Stimulant medications have a history of being diverted and misused. We enforce policies and procedures that prevent misuse and diversion of stimulants, including having our patients sign a stimulant use agreement, keeping careful records and performing regular self-audits. Our practice has a policy of prescribing stimulants only to patients who need stimulants to improve their productivity and to use longer-acting stimulants first, whenever possible. If stimulant misuse becomes a problem, Strattera becomes the medication of choice. Other, non-FDA approved, but frequently used medications are Desipramine, Effexor, and Bupropion.